


Hope

by cloudfree



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon divergent after the disaster that was 15x18, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Chronological, Reunions, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudfree/pseuds/cloudfree
Summary: On how God changes his mind at the very last minute of his final apocalypse, and everyone gets the happy ending they deserve.(A fix-it, hurt/comfort, and my ideal ending for this lovely show all wrapped up into one fic.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Despair" had me _heartbroken _you guys. Misha knocked it out of the park with *that* scene and I'm now so afraid we won't get Castiel back in the last two episodes that I came up with my own ending so that I can ignore canon if it comes to that. I invite you all to join me.__  
>  _  
>  _The first chapter is from God's point of view, and (hopefully) ties up loose ends. The next chapter is what's gonna have the sweet reunion between our boys that I've been dying for. Hope you like it!__  
> 

“You shouldn’t be here,” the Shadow growls. 

Billie said that this vast, endless void would be different after Jack exploded the Empty, and it still is. Even now, he can hear the distant, almost metallic screech of everything he helped create, gears in the background of a purposeless machine. He’d always preferred a reality with noise, though he can admit that noise on this scale after an eternity of quiet is bound to drive anyone insane.

A twinge of guilt escapes him like the first sparks of a flame, but he puts it out before it can spread any further. “Hey,” he wheedles, with a little half smile and a wiggle of the fingers. 

He doesn’t expect the responding welcome to be pleasant by any means. 

Shaking with rage, the Shadow points a finger at him, her eyes wild. This is no longer the snarky, lethargic creature of eons past. Now, she is a wild animal like the ones he fashioned back on earth, hackles raised and claws poised. “You don’t get to say _anything_ to me. _Nothing._ ” She grabs fistfuls of her hair, contorting her limbs like she's in her death throes. “That little half-breed of yours popped in here and woke _everything_ up. _Everything._ And now what am I supposed to do?”

The smile on her face is too wide, pained and mirthless. A look of pure suffering. Once again, he feels the sympathy take root in his core, his smile vanishing, and tries not to flinch away at this open display. 

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says quietly.

There are tears in her eyes. Her voice comes out hoarse when she says, “I just wanted to go to _sleep._ That’s all I wanted to do, that’s all I ever asked or wanted or needed from you but you _couldn’t even give me that._ So what more do you want from me?“

He waits for her to quiet, watching her stumble over unintelligible words, her shoulders jerking violently. When she finally manages to settle into soft, hiccuping sobs, the renewed screech of the awakened angels tears a violent scream from her lungs. She claps her hands over her ears and melts down into a litany of _Ican’tdothisIcan’tdothisIcan’tdothis._

She’s still muttering it over and over when he finally manages to bite back his hesitation and get closer. The distance is both miniscule and eternal, but he crosses it anyway. For the sake of making things right. 

The Shadow freezes as he places a hand on her shoulder.

“I want to make you a deal,” he says. 

~*~

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve bothered to show my face around here again,” God says to the crowd of curious angels. Awe radiates off their face like the gleam of sunlight on water.

Heaven is … less bright than it was when he left it. Despite being entirely metaphysical, its structures are in disarray, like a great big house in the sky that’s been left abandoned, its floorboards left to rot and cobwebs dusting every conceivable corner. Broken windows, leaky pipes, et cetera. He hadn’t cared enough to pay attention on his last trip here, but now it’s all he can see. 

He’d not expected a huge welcome party upon his return, but the scene in front of him is just disappointing, just like it had been when Amara had brought him here against his will _._ He turns to look to his right, where Michael is standing, stiff as a board. Emotionless, impassive outwardly, but God can feel anger and the beginnings of anxiety gnawing on his firstborn son’s innards just as if the feelings were his own.

No one dares to speak, staring at him with matching cowed expressions. 

God sighs, snaps his fingers, and that white, blinding aura surrounding him shuts right off. It doesn’t have the effect he’d hoped, because now they deem it safe to get even closer, flanking him on all sides and nattering away about “how good it is to finally meet you, sir!” and “I _knew_ you were there, I never stopped believing in you!” and other glowing exclamations of awe and delight.

Everyone except for Michael, who gives no indication that he’s even heard. Never Michael, who would have once laid down his life for his beloved Father, the one who told him to obey and love his creations as if they were God himself. Michael, who never once questioned his faith, even after all those centuries in the Cage, says nothing. 

God has failed him in more ways than he would once have cared to admit. 

“Now I know that I have been … absent, lately,” he starts, and everyone quietens so that they can listen. 

He powers through, ignoring the denials of said absence from most of the crowd surrounding him. There are maybe ten or fifteen angels left, tops, none of whom God can immediately remember by name. Has it really been that long? “I know that I left specific directions to you all before I left. And certain events ….” he cringes inwardly at the thought of all those failed plotlines, “made it impossible for you to fulfill them. Multiple times.” 

Looking at them now, all so earnest and childlike and eager to put his mistakes behind them, that’s what they were, weren’t they? Children, anxious to please and obey and be loved _._ Dutiful, obedient children that were abandoned, thrown away, and had to pick up the pieces of a metaphorically broken vase all on their own. 

One that they had been made to break in the first place. 

There’s that odd clench in his chest again. “I’ve decided,” he says, taking a deep breath, “that Heaven is going to fall under new management.” A wave of hushed whispers go up in the air. Even Michael seems surprised.

One of the angels, a small, frazzled looking thing in a black trenchcoat that after some searching God recognizes as Zeruel steps forward, her eyes shining. “Y-you’re coming back to us, my Lord?” 

And wouldn't that be nice? They could go back to being his good little soldiers again, him on the gilded throne and them at ease until he commanded something of them. He doesn’t doubt that, to some, nothing would please them more than this, falling back into line like the last twenty or so years and then some had been a farce, a blip in the radar. 

Smiling sadly, God shakes his head. “No,” he says, shoving a hand into the pocket of his windbreaker. An all too human gesture that he was especially fond of back on Earth. “No,” he repeats, “I’m not fit to rule Heaven any longer.” 

As if on cue, again come the uproar of heated denials, the bootlicking. The pandering that had driven him away in the first place. 

_Was it really their fault, though?_

“Pardon me as I speak out of turn, my Lord!” stutters another angel as he steps forward, dark haired and blue eyed. God manages to coax the name Barachiel from his memory. Interesting that this might be the boldest that he’s ever seen him. Not that he’s seen much of him in the last few millennia, but angels seldom change. “But… you can’t say that about yourself! You will always be worthy to oversee our Holy dominion, as our Father and Creator of All Things and — “

“Save it.” God holds up a hand. His tone is not unkind. He makes sure to make eye contact with everyone in the crowd, even Michael, though the latter steadfastly refuses to meet his gaze. “I suspect that this will be the last you will ever see of me.” 

“What?” Barachiel cries, stunned. “Where are you going?” 

“After you just got back?” whines Eremiel from the back. 

The room erupts into chaos again. With all the lively chatter, it’s hard to believe that the number of individuals in the room are only a small fraction of the original hundreds that had been. 

“Let him speak,” comes a thunderous voice. God snaps his head to the side to find Michael, still stone-faced but having come forward with purpose. “All of your questions will be answered soon,” he murmurs. Though he doesn’t sound too convinced about it — rightfully so — he steps back, nods once at the empty air and goes back to giving everyone the silent treatment. 

God continues gratefully. “I have decided,” he commands, “that Michael, here, is to succeed me as the true ruler of heaven.” 

Ten or fifteen pairs of eyes shift over to Michael, who sends a shocked, questioning look back at him. A chain of gazes, of approval. 

“As my right hand and successor, Michael will be resuming my duties here.” he says. “You are to submit to his judgement from here onwards. Understood?”

The archangel continues to gape, wide-eyed.

“Sorry to interrupt, but what of my existing position?” calls out a domineering voice. 

God turns to look at the blond angel that has spoken, the one who had been in charge thus far. A glint of challenge lights up her fierce eyes. “I will get to that in a moment,” God says, “though I have to say you’ve done remarkably well running the place in my absence, Naomi.”

Naomi preens under his gaze and offers no comment.

“Right, as I was saying, there are a few more things I need to get out of the way…”

~*~

Overhead, the church steeple shoots up like an arrow bursting into the sky, surrounded by vacant suburbia. It’s like a graveyard after dark, or a ghost town. What makes it eerier is the fact that there’s no one around anymore. A place of his worship seems like the best place to end this saga he’d put so much care into spinning.  
  
That’s what Chuck had thought, going into it. Now, he’s been made to rethink a few things. Which is strange, considering he doesn’t get _made_ to do anything. Au contraire, he’s the one _doing_ the making in all cases. 

Death is dead (ironic, right?), Amara is gone, returned into him, the Empty was satisfied with its tribute courtesy of Castiel’s sacrifice and is unlikely to intervene in their business any further. Michael is nowhere to be found. The only human beings left on earth are Sam, Dean, and Jack, so they’ve got no major players on their side anymore — not counting Jack, who barely knows what he’s doing on a good day. 

Chuck has already thought up every possible plot twist, every discernible way that he can plunge the knife deeper into the Winchesters’ proverbial guts for the sake of the story. He wonders what harebrained scheme they could come up with this time to try and defy him, as if they could defy God himself. 

What he doesn’t expect, however, is the two of them, _just_ the two of them, unarmed and wearing matching, defeated expressions as they make their way down the center aisle and slide into the pew next to him like the entire world hadn’t just disappeared and they’re all just attending Sunday mass together. 

It’s Sam taking the lead, Sam who bumps shoulders with him like this is all one big joke and they’ve made plans to go out to lunch in a couple of hours. _The audacity,_ thinks Chuck with a peeved smirk on his face, ready to smite them with a snap of his fingers, but the look on Dean’s face as he comes in next to Sam gives him pause. 

He tries to think of a witty one liner to say, _because villains get the best lines, don’t they?_

“Where’s the kid?” he asks instead.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Dean mutters, so quietly that even Chuck with all his omnipresence can barely hear him. His face is gaunt and sallow, cheeks sucked in so tight he might as well be a pile of bones with a layer of skin stretched over them. His eyes are a puffy, mutinous red.

Sam nudges him and shoots him a signature bitchface. “Sorry about Dean,” he says to Chuck, ever the pacifist. It’s strange to see him do such a one-eighty, though, considering they’d been out for his blood not three days ago. Is this their way of conceding defeat? “He’s, uh. Y’know. A little broken up about everything that’s happened.”

The understatement of the century. Okay, Chuck will play along. “Haven’t got any secret tricks up your sleeve this time? No macguffins you think you might be able to take me with?” he demands. “The kid. Where is he?”

“Whoa, easy. We just want to talk.” Sam holds up his hands like he’s trying to calm a panicked horse. _The audacity._ Chuck huffs, crosses his arms. “No weapons, no magic soul nukes this time. Nothing. We thought it would be better to leave Jack in the car for this one. But I-I can go get him, if you want.” 

“Yeah, that’d be nice, Sammy.” 

Sam gives him a brief, jittery smile, the one he reserves for outsiders, mostly, or for when he’s thinking about something unpleasant but is too nice to say it out loud. The muscles in his cheek twitch, staccato and featherlight. The suspicion in his face makes it clear to Chuck that Sam knows exactly what he’s doing, but the younger Winchester goes along with it anyway. “Great. I’ll, uh, be right back then.” 

The heavy sound of his footfalls echoes through the church as he leaves the two of them alone.

“You gonna fridge all three of us in one go?” Comes Dean’s voice, low and guttural like a chainsaw through shattered concrete. “Is that your plan?” 

Earlier in his tone there was fury so hot it could have set water aflame, but now the man in front of him is just tired. Exhaustion leaks from his features like the sludge from a Leviathan’s vessel.

“Please, Dean.” Chuck shoots him a condescending smile. “I could have gotten Jack back here myseIf if I wanted to. Heck, I could have gotten the whole Impala in here and crushed you three in it with a snap of these.” He wiggles his fingers. “No, I just wanted to have a little one-on-one chat with my best pal.” 

“Yeah, well, forgive me for not being too thrilled about it,” spits the elder Winchester, but there’s no real bite to it, not anymore. So many losses have taken every last ounce of fight left in him, leaving nothing but a shell behind. 

Now if only this shell could do as he was told so Chuck can move on already. 

Chuck says nothing for a bit. Dean says nothing either, won’t even look at him. The quiet between them stretches almost as long as the darkened expanse of the Empty itself. “I’m legitimately curious,” Chuck says conversationally, realizing that Dean’s cold silence will not break on its own. “What were your plans coming here? I wrote out a bunch of possible scenarios, but knowing you guys I’m sure none of them are very likely.” 

“Thought you were the dungeon master,” remarks Dean tiredly, glancing at him. “Aren’t you the one pulling all the strings here?” 

“I am.” Chuck corrects himself with a grimace, “or at least, I was.”

“Bullshit. You’ve got us all in a chokehold and you know it. You know exactly what the hell we’re doing here and you aren’t going to budge. So stop dragging it on and do what you want to do already.”

“As appealing as that sounds,” Chuck muses, checking his fingernails, “I don’t know what to expect from you boys. Thought that was pretty obvious.”

“Maybe to you.” The bitterness filling the air is almost tangible. Dean barks out a derisive laugh. “I don’t know _what_ to think anymore.”

Chuck stops what he was doing and looks at him. The Righteous Man, soul so bright it could take your eyes out, hell’s miasma notwithstanding. Now, in front of him, that bulb has dimmed considerably, like the gleam of an emerald slow-fading to camouflage.

“What did you hope to achieve by calling me here?” he repeats, by now out of real genuine curiosity and not disdain. 

Okay, maybe there’s still a little disdain there. They _had_ shot him, after all. 

“Don’t ask me,” grouses Dean. “This was Sam’s idea.” 

That gets Chuck’s attention. “Yeah?” 

“He thought we could, I dunno, talk it out,” Dean shrugs. “I told him this was gonna be a one way trip to the slaughterhouse, yet here we are.” His gaze shifts sideways, and his expression is taut and wary, poised like a cut bowstring. But his body is relaxed — limp, almost, like he’s accepted his fate.

Chuck grins. “Haven’t tried to kill you yet.”

“ _Yet_.” 

“What makes you think you can change my mind, anyway?” Chuck asks instead, thinking back to all the times everyone else had tried to and failed. Even _Amara_ had failed, and she is currently somewhere within him, brooding as he taps into her power shares so they can destroy the known universe together.

Dean pauses, like he is mulling this over. “...I can’t,” he says finally.

“But you wanted to try anyway?” 

“Sam did.”

“Your brother’s heart is too big, even for that giant frame of his.”

That elicits a reaction out of Dean. “I’ll say,” he snorts, before clamming up. Chuck has been trying to wipe their slate clean, toying with their lives since before they had even been born and here Dean is getting chummy with him like it’s all water under the bridge. 

“Dean Winchester,” Chuck says suddenly, startling him. “Y’know, I always liked Sam better. Thought he was easier to work with, better personality and all.” 

“Gee, thanks for the ego boost.” 

“You, on the other hand.” His gaze steels. “You gave me _so many problems._ You could never do as you were told, unless it was your dad doing the telling.” He laughs. “But I guess I made you that way. Both you and your angel.”

Dean growls. “Your point being?” 

“I know what this is about, Dean. You’re normally much feistier than this.” Amusement comes out in a huff. “Look at you now, giving up so quickly. It’s disappointing. You think you’re _so_ slick, brooding and moping and chugging enough alcohol to drink an elephant under the table for your ‘brother in arms’.”

“Yeah?” He hasn’t even mentioned Castiel by name yet, and already Dean is angry, just like that. “What do you know about me and Cas, huh?”

“You ruined him.” Chuck says simply. “Turned him disobedient, just like you, and I had nothing to do with any of it. I might have cracked his chassis, sure, but you went and sledgehammered it apart and that poor guy was whipped for you, up until the very end. Though you don’t need me to tell you that.”

Speechless for a moment, the elder Winchester swiftly recovers, his tone hard. “Yeah, well, he’s gone now. So it doesn’t matter.” 

They both ignore the words that go unsaid. _Nothing does._

“So, you gonna give me your schtick or what?” Chuck asks after a few more minutes of brooding silence, because he needs to move this along. “Your rationale for why I shouldn’t wipe the slate clean?” 

Conceding, Dean shifts slightly and begins to speak. “Look, I’m sorry that I wouldn’t play your part, okay?” He does not sound even remotely apologetic about this, but Chuck lets it slide. “But I just — this isn’t what I wanted. None of this. Not you, not Amara, not the friggin’ Empty, _any_ of it.” His voice breaks a little. “I just wanted this little family we’d made along the way, y’know? Just wanted everyone to be okay and safe, and _happy,_ if it ain’t too much to ask.” 

“And I get it. Believe me, _I_ get it, and you should get that I understand you because we both know how it feels when things don’t go our way but,” he takes a stuttered breath, one that brings out the raw suffering on the lines of his face even more. “Please. I hope you try to see it from our perspective.”

“Maybe.” Chuck says, uncrossing his arms and rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. “Tell me more.”

~*~

Right before it all ends, Chuck lets his sister out for the last time. 

Nature was always her favorite part of any universe, so he chooses a wooded park, the trees green and rustling as the afternoon breeze runs its fingers through the leaves. It’s the same one Amara had taken him to, back when she’d attempted to convince him of how beautiful the world was. 

At first, he hadn’t believed her, because your sister is legally obligated to give you nice feedback and he figured that maybe she was just trying to butter him up. But maybe she was right about some parts, he thinks, as an oak leaf drifts from the tree, still mostly green to its tips, and into his hands. There’s beauty in the little things, that much he can acknowledge. The vein patterns on the leaf. The wind in his hair, the smell of cut grass and fresh mulch wafting through the air. 

Sometimes he forgets about those little things that went into his creations. Maybe he deserves a pat on the back sometimes. Maybe he wasn’t entirely washed up and burned out like he’d thought.

Chuck seeks out that old, rickety bench just beneath the shade of a large grove, where she liked to sit in the afternoons and drink tea to old showtunes. Then he closes his eyes. From out of his outstretched fingers comes the thick, cascading black smoke, wisping at the edges and pouring out into a human shaped mold. She’s wearing the signature black dress, her default style, dark hair cascading about her shoulders.  
  
Once fully manifested, Amara sends him a confused look. “What’s wrong?” 

Chuck sighs. “I’ve been thinking about some things, and I’ve made a decision.” 

Quirking her brow at him, his sister frowns. “That doesn’t sound good,” she quips. “What have you decided upon?” Then she looks around, and, on noticing the familiar hustle and bustle of people around, her discomfited expression morphs into one of considerable relief. “I take it you’re not intending on destroying this place anymore.”

“There was a _s_ _light_ change in plans,” Chuck grins. 

“I’m glad you came around,” says Amara dryly, but there’s no insincerity to her tone. “Your creations are truly beautiful, brother.” 

Even now does her praise affect him more than he would care to admit. ”Thanks, sis,” he says gruffly, and he finds that he means it more than ever. She comes to sit next to him, one leg swept over the other and her hands folded neatly in her lap. 

“Say, have you ever… wanted to be human?” Chuck asks her. “Like, _human_ human?”

“It’s crossed my mind once or twice.” Amara takes a deep breath. “Seems like it could be interesting. Why do you ask?” 

“What if I …” Chuck frowns, sighs, then tries again. “How would you like to be one? ...Human, I mean.” 

“Wait. What are you saying?”

~*~

“I want to make you a deal,” God repeats, gentler still. His hand remains poised above the Empty’s shoulder, unsure of what to do. He never was too good at offering physical comfort. _Or owning up to his own mistakes._ He watches her, helpless as she shudders in that uncanny way of hers. She pauses to look up at him, disdain plain on her face. 

“I don’t trust you,” she sneers through tears. 

“Might wanna hear me out before you say that,” God insists. “I’ve got a feeling you’ll like what I have to offer.”

“What could _you_ possibly have to offer?” The Shadow laments. “All you’ve ever done is _take_ from me…” She’s beginning to hyperventilate again, her artificial breaths coming out in quick, short bursts. “Use it to build your little sandcastles, mess around with everything without any regard for anything else, you — you …” 

“Tell you what,” God cuts in. “You were right. About me interfering in the Empty, screwing around in here too much even though we agreed that this would be your realm, taking things from you, misusing your kindness. The whole nine yards. And I’m sorry.” 

“But what will an apology do?” the Shadow shrieks, tossing her head back and forth, Everything about her is frazzled, jump-started into restless action. “Everyone is _awake,_ there’s nowhere to sleep, nowhere to go…There’s _too. Much. Noise._ How are you going to fix this?” 

“That’s only the start of what I had to say,” winces God. Now the sounds of demons and angels alike are too loud for even him to ignore, an unending, unified screech of pain and pure regret. “What if I told you that you could go back to the peace and quiet?”

That piques her interest, though her beady eyes are still leering and suspicious. “ _How?”_ she hisses.

“There’d be no one left in here but you, just you.” He scratches his beard, then jams his hands into his pockets, looking uncertain. “Just you, and me.”

~*~

“You want to.” Amara stops short in disbelief. “Take my powers.”

“Yep.”

“And then you want to cut a deal with the Empty so that you can exchange your life for the lives of everything that’s ever died and ended up there.”

“Right again! And that’s not all.” Chuck’s grin is as dazzling as the curtains of afternoon sunlight filtering in through the trees. “You’re missing the best part.”

“Of course, how could I forget? You want to use our combined powers to build a _new_ place for all those dead things to go, before you go and be dead in their place.”

“It would be better to just make angels and demons unkillable, but that’d give the humans an unfair disadvantage.” As usual, Chuck chooses to completely ignore the most glaring issue in his idea. He waves his hands with a flourish, then claps them together. “Got any good name ideas? Purgatory is already a thing. How about Purgatory 2?”

Amara sighs. Chuck’s told her time and time again that if she keeps frowning like that, it’s likely to stick. Eons and it already has. “But, brother, I don’t understand. What brought this on? Why did you change your mind? _How_ did you change your mind, is the question I should be asking.”

He grins at her. “It's a funny story, actually.”

~*~

Dean does his absolute best to explain why their personal autonomy is wholly deserved, after everything they’d been through, but by the end he’s so out of it that Chuck takes pity on him and resumes the time he'd stopped so that Jack and Sam can return. Dean's never been as good with feelings to start with, though Chuck can appreciate the effort. 

As intent as he still is upon sticking to the plan, he has to admit that Dean’s words have struck something in him, a tiny, insistent voice in the back of his head that won’t abate. So the least he can do is humor it and listen to the rest of whatever they have to say before he does, in fact, go through with it.

Several minutes later, Sam dips beneath the low hanging arch as he enters through the doorway, followed closely by an apprehensive Jack toddling behind him like an imprinted duckling. Truth be told, sometimes he forgets that the kid is his grandson. It’s all too easy to treat him like a plot point, what with his innocent dopiness and the unprecedented amount of power the union of human and archangel has buffed him with.

He's also one of the characters that Chuck didn’t have a hand in creating — that distinction went to Lucifer alone. _And Miss Kline, of course,_ he reminds himself. Just another blatant reminder of how he, the writer, has failed to control the direction in which his characters have gone. 

It takes a few glances exchanged between moose and duckling, nervous on one side and reassuring on the other, before Jack reluctantly concedes, coming to sit on the other side of Dean so he’s furthest away. Sam opts for the substantial amount of empty space between himself and Dean, sitting in the middle of them like they’re all going to alternate between reading verses and discussing the football match during sermon. 

“Dean and I were having an interesting conversation just now,” Chuck says. “Hear you have a few things to say to me too.”

Sam smiles that uncomfortable half-smile again. “It’s why we prayed to you to meet us here. Will you hear me out?” 

“I’m sitting here now, aren’t I?” 

“Hah.” Sam says. “Right. Anyway.” He looks like he is readying himself for the worst. “Is it too late to ask you to leave us alone? No strings attached, no special favors. Just you go off to wherever and we go off to wherever, so we can all live our own lives. And,” his voice turns small, as though he were a kid asking his parents for an extra cookie before bedtime, “can you please put everyone back?”

“What makes you think I would do that?” Chuck asks slowly. “I’m primed and ready to pull the trigger on this crapfest. My greatest story turned biggest failure.”

“But… it’s not just a story anymore,” Sam says. “And I think you know that.”

“Maybe I don’t.” Chuck will play devil’s advocate, for the man who had shot him in the shoulder and wished him dead. “But please, educate me.”

Sam waits for Dean’s fidget of affirmation before he starts speaking. “You keep treating us, like — “ Sam’s hands clench and unclench into fists before him. Overhead, the stained glass windows are beginning to reflect deeper reds and greens and blues in through the window, throwing a kaleidoscope of colors onto the carpeted floor. “Like characters, in a story. Things you get to control and use.”

Chuck waited, not saying anything because that’s precisely what they are.  
  
“But that’s not how it is anymore. Because the truth is, Chuck, in the end this wasn’t your greatest failure,” Sam says, and is received with a confused squint. “You made life, the world, the universe. Hundreds, thousands, maybe _millions_ of times over. Sure, even if all the other ones might have been… imitations, of the real thing, you said it yourself,” He grimaces. “None of it could ever compare to the real thing.”

“...Go on,” urges Chuck. 

“Even if you couldn’t get the ending you wanted for us, because _believe me,_ you won’t — “ both Dean and Jack nod solemnly at this — “you aren’t writing a story anymore. We’re real living people, in a real _living_ world, and _you_ , you said it yourself,” Sam repeats earnestly, desperately, “You gave us free will. And we’re using it now, all of us. We’re following _your_ plot. Tell me, is that really so bad?” 

Out of sheer habit, Chuck looks at Dean to find that he’s looking back at nothing. The easy smile he’d been wearing fades. Quiet falls over the church once more, darkness shifting in, as the sun slides lower into the sky. On the carpet, a lit up cross is stretched out and distorted. 

Everyone snaps up when Jack speaks. “I can kill you, I think,” are the first words out of the boy's mouth. The nephilim says them with childish uncertainty, but his hands are gripped into loose fists. “If it comes to that. Or at least, I can hold you off long enough for them to get away.” 

Both Dean and Sam start, but Chuck just laughs. “I like your spirit, kid. But you can’t hurt me.”

A little lie wouldn’t make his predicament worse. Why would he be so focused on getting rid of Jack if he has no reason to be afraid of him? It isn’t just a seething dislike that motivates Chuck to attempt murder on the only blood grandson he’s ever had. The kid’s a wild card, something not entirely known to him. Not unkillable by any means, but definitely not predictable, either.

And it scares him.

“You’re wrong,” Jack says as his eyes flash orange-gold. He hasn’t called the bluff. “When I went to the Empty, it changed me. Something’s wrong with me, I can feel it. I — “ His face tilts upwards, slowly, until the beseeching, angry puppy dog look is turned on Chuck full force. “She told me I was different.” 

“The Empty?” Sam and Dean ask in unison. 

“You woke everybody up,” Chuck says, nodding along. “And you atomized her with the celestial-nuke, even if it was temporary. So,” he mulls this over, pulling at his scraggly beard, “you’ve absorbed some of her powers. Theirs, too.” 

“I think so,” Jack replies almost apologetically. “So, please. Don’t hurt them.” 

“My point is,” Sam interrupts, glancing uneasily at him, “We can’t be pawns on your game board any longer. We shouldn’t be.” He shifts on the pew, which is hard and uncomfortable. “After all this time, decades and decades of … _fighting_ and _losing_ and _hurting,_ ” now it’s his turn to pull out the puppy eyes. “Don’t we deserve that much?” 

Chuck finds, with steadily increasing dismay, that they're starting to work on him.

~*~

“...If it all goes according to plan, your fallen brothers and sisters should return to you in a few hours,” God is saying thoughtfully, “and since there are going to be so many of you, I doubt everybody will end up getting along.”

“That was before we had a unifying purpose,” Zeruel pipes up, raising a trembling hand. 

“We didn’t know how to run heaven before,” adds Naomi solemnly. “There was no _right_ way to run it, for the first time in millennia. There was no one left to tell us what to do, not even the archangels, and that’s why we vied for its control.”

“But now,” Barachiel says with shining eyes, “now we will all do as you say, and everything will return to peace and harmony, because you are the — “

“Lord our God, Father of All, _blah blah blah_.” God waves him off again. “I know.” 

He turns to look at Michael. “My last request,” he says, aiming it solely at him, trying to fit in thousands of years worth of regret and missed birthdays into his tone. He wonders if Michael will ever forgive him. Wonders if he even deserves it. “Is that you try not to start anymore apocalypses like I did.” 

Michael’s eyes are suspiciously red. The small, trembling quirk of his lips are also suspect. But he nods. 

“Adam’s in there too, isn’t he?” God asks, squinting at the vessel’s face, both youthful and impossibly old all at once. It’s partially his fault the kid was left in the Cage for so long. “Send him my regards.”

“He heard everything you said.” Michael says, but suddenly he looks unsure. Around, the angels are hushed, respectful. Murmuring amongst themselves. “Father, I — “

“Listen to me, Michael,” and ever the dutiful child, Michael shuts up and listens. “You are going to do a _much_ better job of running this place than I ever did. I believe it with everything I am.” 

Shocked, Michael says nothing, gazing at him with wide, imploring eyes. So unlike the proud, capable warrior he both is and no longer is. 

“It’s always been you, golden boy,” God continues, smiling sadly. “No one better to take my place than you. So…” he’s never been good at the whole _‘_ Father’ thing, but he affords Michael a pat on the back, a warm glance. “It’s on you now. Whatever you want to do.” His gaze sweeps across the crowd. “All of you. You are free to do as you wish from here on out.”

He doesn’t quite ignore the clamor of praise, the new round of tears and awed expressions at his declaration. With a wink and that little, awkward half wave, he snaps his fingers and leaves heaven for the last time with a smile on his face.

Maybe there’s hope for them yet. 

~*~

“This is _my_ battle to fight, Amara,” Chuck says. “My mess to clean up. And it’s a big one. But,” he smiles out at the field around him. A small yellow dog bounds by them, pulling her tired-looking owner along with far more strength than a tiny thing like her should have. He watches the two shapes disappear into the trees. “I think I owe them this much.” 

Amara hums, a downcast note to her tone. “So.. you’re just going to …?”

“Go to sleep,” Chuck says. “Just supercharged-me and the Empty, alone together, forever. Unless you wanted to come with.” All he needs to see is the slight twitch of her nose before he knows her answer, loud and clear. He smiles bitterly.

“Just like that?” She’s apprehensive. 

“Just like that.” Chuck confirms. 

“But...why?”

“I’m tired, Amara.” He sighs. “Every story has to end. I tried to keep it going, only wanting to end it because it felt like the story was coming apart, cause the characters weren’t listening to me but,” he lets the leaf he’d been holding drift away from his fingers, watching it twirl to the ground in an easy dance. “Maybe I was going about it in the entirely wrong way. Maybe it’s time we let the stories end themselves for a change, no higher powers involved.”

“So you wanted to give everyone in the Empty a second chance?” 

“Initially that was my only motive,” Chuck admits. “But this whole thing...the way I’ve been acting, the way I’ve gone about writing this story and tried to keep it going past its prime. Maybe I’ve lingered here, in this universe, for too long. Enough to consider myself physically a part of it.” He laughs tonelessly, but there’s a newfound liberation to it that he’d never had before. “And after a while that got me thinking, maybe... it’s time for my own story to end.”

Around him, the trees rustle as if in agreement. He looks down at his own hands, these weary old opposable thumbs that have helped shape galaxies and quarks, supernovas and newborn stars and plants and animals and _human beings_. All by his own design, a beautiful reality of his own making.

“I know you love it here,” Chuck says to the wind. “I’ve seen you, the way you come alive when you interact with what I’ve made. That’s why I’m asking if you want to experience it to the fullest.” He cracks a smile. “I’m told that, for what it’s worth, the human lifespan can be very rewarding.”

“It’s not about that.” Amara stares at him. 

“Oh, of course. It's about where you go afterward, isn’t it?” Chuck laughs without a care in the world. “Not to worry, sis. My replacement up in Heaven is going to be a very effective one. And I can tell him to pull a few strings for you, if need be. You’ll continue your existence there, of course, with the angels and other souls. I’ll make you one… a soul, of course, if you agree.”

“I can’t stop you, can I?” Amara interrupts. Chuck glances over at her, the leftover words dying on his lips. She gazes down at the ground. “Never could.” 

“Sis — ?”

She turns away, smiling sadly to herself. “You were always so willful, little brother, so keen on creating and building and breathing life into things. You were both beautiful and infuriating, you know that?” Laughing, blinking, disbelief. “And so _stubborn_ when it comes to what you want." There's a subtle jolt in her shoulders. "My wonderful, special little brother.”

“Hey, gross,” Chuck smiles weakly, trying to lighten the mood. Still, his stomach twists at her words. “Don’t get all sappy on me. I'm sitting right here.” 

Amara says nothing, so he takes a deep breath. “Before I go, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, sis. Again. For everything I did to you. For locking you away with the Mark all those years ago, for leaving you alone, for —” 

She pulls him into a tight hug and it effectively cuts off anything else he had to say. They stay like that, whether for minutes or hours he doesn’t know, but Chuck allows himself to revel in her warmth one last time. How comforting the darkness can be.

“Okay,” she says, pulling away and dabbing at her eyes. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

~*~

It’s Jack’s turn to beg for his life. 

The nephilim, unsurprisingly, goes about it in a completely different way, more polite and subdued like the way his chosen father had acted. Everything about him, from squinty eyes to the cheekbones to floppy, permanently-mussed hair, the quirk of the brow, suggests nothing about him having ever been Lucifer’s. It’s as though he’s looking at a younger mirror image of that infuriating angel of Thursday, but the idea somehow fails to annoy Chuck more than he thought it would.

The innocence inside Jack has been twisted, sure, but it’s still there, bright and certain thanks to Castiel’s lingering influence. It’s what allows him to tilt his head in that eerily reminiscent manner and get his way, perhaps one of the only reasons he’s been allowed to stay with the Winchesters for so long despite being of a blood many, including the brothers themselves, would call tainted.

“God,” says Jack.

“Kid.” Chuck won’t call him by name. “What now? You got any closing remarks for me?” 

“No, well,” Jack backtracks, running a hand through his hair. “Yes, actually.” His expression shrinks, no doubt in remembrance of the multiple times Chuck had snapped his fingers and threatened to end his life before, in a similar position. How he’d even succeeded that one time. “Sir.”

Chuck rolls his eyes. “Don’t let me stop you,” he mutters.

“I think Sam and Dean are right,” the nephilim says, glancing at them and back at him nervously. “I think … they deserve some peace now. After everything.”

“Hey, hold it.” Dean interrupts, green eyes flashing. “What’s this about ‘they’? This is very much a _‘we’_ matter. All of us.”

Jack turns to him. “That’s not true,” he says instantly, his tone sharpened by purpose. “Dean, I’ve done nothing but hurt you. Both of you, for as long as I’ve been alive.” The matter-of-factness in his tone forces Chuck to recall, uncomfortably, that the boy is only three years old, very much a baby and yet forced to bear such a burden this young. 

“I killed their mother, all of those angels. So many people. If anyone deserves to be punished for everything that’s happened, it’s me.” Then he turns back to Chuck. “Take me instead. Please, leave my family alone.” There's so much conviction in his face, so much willingness to protect them despite the obvious fear coming off of him in waves. 

“No, Jack,” Sam pleads. “It’s not your fault.”

He is just a child. 

“Jack, listen to me — “ Dean is saying. 

Something has changed, but Chuck can’t put his finger on what. Jack is looking at him with concern.

He should be encouraging this. This is supposed to happen; this is how it's supposed to end. They’re supposed to be sacrificing themselves, down one by one like bottles in a line, set out for target practice. Someone _has_ to die. Sacrifices are _poignant._ That’s the way all good tales come to a close. He ought to do as Jack asks, end him and then them, once and for all right there in front of the pulpit so he can revel in the sweet victory, one that has taken countless repeats to secure.

But there’s no joy to it now.

Chuck raises his head skyward, to where the window is casting the last glimmers of evening light into the church, and finally asks himself the burning question: What is he doing? 

Why does he want this so badly? 

As much as he hates to admit it, something in the Winchesters’ words have stirred something inside him. They’re right. He _has_ introduced to them the concept of free will, autonomy. He’d left this realm behind and come back to it like the ones he’d left it to hadn’t staked their own claims on it in the meantime. 

He is a writer. The characters, the plots, the settings. Everything is his. 

But he’d neglected them. Let them grow into something he can no longer control, not reliably. Now, they’re just going to find new ways to defy him, every time he tries to set them up the way he wants, and this cat-and-mouse game will continue with no end in sight. 

Can he even claim ownership over them anymore?

“Chuck?” Sam probes. 

Now all three of them are looking at him with equal parts concern and unease. Sweeping his gaze over the three unkempt, haggard faces sitting beside him, it finally hits him, full force like the universe has restarted again without his input.

Chuck laughs. 

“Somethin’ funny to you?” demands Dean. 

Sam elbows him, Jack glancing over in alarm, but the ire in his expression doesn’t waver. Chuck wipes a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye and rubs the back of his neck. 

“This is how it’s gonna be, isn’t it?” Chuck says, a slight, vacant smile on his face. “No matter how hard I try.” He shrugs. “Okay. You win.” 

No one moves. “What are you going to do?” Jack asks, eyes wide.

“For starters, this.”

The world seems to move in slow motion. Chuck snaps his fingers, watching as all three of them jump forward in alarm, the beginnings of a unified shout escaping their lips — what else _can_ they do? — and that’s that. It has barely taken him a second and a half, but the deed is done. 

“I’ve put everyone back. Just like you asked.”

“Wh — and that’s it? No catch?” Dean manages to stammer out after about a minute of thunderous silence. Shock turns into burning suspicion. “What the hell are you up to now?”

“Are you changing your mind?” Sam asks gently, hopefully. His arm is curled around Jack’s shoulders in a tense, protective embrace, something that Chuck had somehow failed to notice earlier, but now it’s the only thing he can see. 

“You got it, Sammy,” Chuck flashes him a tired smile. “I’ve just...I’ve realized a few things.” That’s all he can really say. “Maybe I’ve been wasting my time here. Yours too.”

“So — what does this mean?”

“It means I’m going to stay out of your hair from now on. You win,” Chuck repeats, defeat settling into his bones. “This has gone on for too long, and I’ve just now come to the conclusion that I’m too tired to give a crap anymore.” He won’t let them see any more of the crushing shame he’s currently feeling. Wouldn’t let them win _that_ way, at the very least. He nods at them. “Do whatever you want.”

Sam’s phone rings. It echoes in the stupefied quiet of the church, resonating off the walls, a shrill, three-note wake-up call. Slowly, the younger Winchester seems to come to life again, as if he’s returning to flesh from stone. Sending Jack and Dean a sideways glance, he pulls it out of his pocket with no small amount of hesitation, his lips moving wordlessly as he reads the name flashing across the screen. 

“It’s Eileen,” he whispers, sounding strangled. “She just sent me a text. She’s okay. She’s _alive._ ” Then, as the tone begins to repeat, bursts of noise in quick succession, “Donna. Bobby. Charlie, too. They’re all back.” There’s a misty, awestruck sheen to his eyes. Finally remembering that Chuck is still sitting there with them, he turns to him, but seems at a loss for words.

Dean is staring straight ahead, a hard edge to his jaw that’s markedly different from his usual brooding. Mulling it all over. Jack, on the other hand, is smiling along to Sam’s speechless delight like he’s only just realized what is going on. 

“Sorry, kid,” Chuck says to him, feeling like he ought to apologize. “For, y’know, trying to kill you all those times. Don’t worry about me coming after you anymore.”

There's a pause. “I’m sorry, too,” Jack tilts his head, frowns like Castiel, a squinty, confused air to it. “For messing all your plans up. I really didn’t mean to do that.” 

Innocent as always. He's a good kid. 

“I’m the last person who should be giving you advice, but you stay gold, ponyboy,” Chuck encourages him, the tiniest speck of fondness in his voice, then slaps his hands together. “Well, I’m outta here. Got some things to take care of up in heaven before I head off. See you guys around.”

“Wait, you can’t just — “ Dean starts angrily, but Chuck has already disappeared. He throws his hands up in the air, running his tongue across his teeth in frustration. “ _....and_ he’s gone.” 

Sam places a grounding hand on his arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t look the gift horse in the mouth, Dean,” he says meaningfully.

“Sorry if I’m not as thrilled about this as you are,” Dean spits, looking like he desperately wants to be. “He, what, just changed his mind like _that?_ No, I don’t believe it. He’s planning something. I ain’t gonna rest easy until I know for sure.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack pipes up before he can say another word. Both the brothers halt in place, the question hanging in the air. “He meant what he said.” 

“My grandfather won’t be back.” There is a strange, sad twist to Jack’s expression, one that Dean and Sam recognize all too well. Then, in the same heartbeat, he brightens, like he’s already put all of the hardships in his life behind him. “We should go see how everyone’s doing.” 

~*~

The Shadow stops for a moment as she takes him in, what he’s just said. “You … are different,” she says suspiciously, now a bit calmer over the resounding, shrill wail in the background. 

“Glad you finally noticed,” God smirks, ignoring the tilt of her head. He gazes around at the infinite expanse of nothingness around him, taking it in. “I’ve given myself a little upgrade.”

“I don’t understand,” says the Shadow, face twisted in confusion. 

“This is the best deal you’ll ever get,” God says as energy courses through his physical form. Briefly, he allows his eyes, one brilliant blue and the other the blackest night, to flash at her, a promise. “So like I said. You get me, the one who screwed everything up for you in the first place, and you get Amara — well, her powers, anyway,” he adds. “And you let everyone else go.” 

“It’ll be quiet again?” The beginnings of hope, childlike and unfamiliar.

Oblivion, where angels and demons alike would now go if they died, had taken him four days and nights to fashion with Amara's help and was something of a mix of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. _Earth._ The framework had already been there. Everything he’d ever made all cobbled together into one realm.

“No one’s coming back here when they kick it. It’ll be quiet forever,” God smiles. He watches the Shadow glance up at him. “That’s what you want, right?”

“More than anything,” she whispers. 

“So let’s do it.”   
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion we've all been waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am just going to ignore 15x19 because it was also a travesty. Holding out hope for episode 20 to make it right, but if not then I'm going to consider my own ending canon :')
> 
> Cheers!

The guns are loaded in the back seat. Chuck is gone, everyone is back. 

_Everyone except Cas._

The gates to Hell are locked, every demon and errant soul trapped inside — Rowena and Crowley (who woke up with the rest of them when Jack’s alarm call blazed through the Empty) somehow have managed to put aside their differences and are working to keep it that way. On the other end, Earth seems void of anything angel related, so Michael must’ve done the same up in Heaven. He comes around, sometimes, to tell them of any pressing news, but otherwise he stays away. 

Around them, life moves on, blind to everything they’ve had to go through. It was like God, the Darkness, the Empty, — none of it had ever existed in the first place. Jody and the girls are up in Sioux Falls, still hunting on occasion but less out of necessity than ever before. Bobby’s opened up an auto repair shop down south, Charlie settled down with her girl. Eileen’s moved into the bunker full time, and Sam smiles more than he ever has in his life, his own little nuclear family ready to go, now that Jack’s fully human again. Maybe they can have a normal life this time around.

As happy as he is for everyone else, It’s a testament to Dean’s shit luck that, despite every single demon and angel to have ever existed coming back to life in one fell swoop, the one he’d wanted to return to him the most still hasn’t shown his stupid mug. 

Of course, they haven’t stopped looking for him. Everyone who’s ever worked with the Winchesters knows to call them if they catch any glimpse of a trenchcoat-wearing angel with too blue eyes, if something suspicious pops up on the grapevine. Days and days pass with Dean struggling to keep his eyes open as he sits by the phone, waiting for something — _anything._

But the call never comes. 

That evening, Dean ignores the beer and goes straight for the proof liquor like he’s done day in and day out the entire three weeks Cas has been dead. He’s spent his time, all those hours getting so plastered that he forgets he exists, sidling along seedy alleyways and getting into brutal fights when he means to, barely able to see straight and so heartsick it leaves him hollow. This bar in particular is loud, cacophonous, perfect to hide the tattered shell of a man drinking himself to death in its midst. 

_Because the one thing I want, I know I can’t have._

He might’ve been on the tenth or eleventh shot before he remembers he’s still wearing the jacket; he’d never taken it off. Barely remembering to pay his tab, he stumbles blindly out of the bar and down the dimly lit, empty streets. He walks for what seems like hours and hours, unable to recall his own name, through alleyways and beneath flickering lamp posts.

Somewhere out behind a cluster of nondescript buildings, Dean thinks about setting the handprint aflame.

He watches the glow of his lighter dance along the brick walls as he clicks it to life, swaying from toe to toe like a tower in a rainstorm. Thinks about that last bit of smoldering fabric floating away to the breeze, wondering if it’ll burn away the aching hole in his core. Night chill hits the little slices where his skin is exposed, but Dean pays it no mind. If the cold manages to kill him, get him pneumonia or frostbite or something, then it’s for the best. 

He doesn’t take the jacket off.

_You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you out of Hell, knowing you has changed me._

_Because you cared, I cared. I cared about you, I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack._

_But I cared about the whole world because of you._

_You changed me, Dean._

He doesn’t realize he’s on his knees until his spine jolts at the contact between them and the ground. His vision is blurred, and there’s wetness on his cheeks. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, shuddering hiccups growing into all out, heaving sobs. The dust beneath his arms is gritty and sticks to the skin; there’s nothing quite as miserable as this, cold and alone and hurting in a way no spirits can heal. 

_I love you,_ he’d said, without giving Dean a chance to ever say it back. 

And now he’ll never be able to.

A pair of warm hands grab him by the shoulders and lift him up with surprising strength, but there is nothing to support him once he’s up. His legs have stopped working; if not for the arms keeping him suspended, he would have keeled right over again. Bile threatens to rise up in the back of his throat, mingled with the sour taste of alcohol. The world is muddled and bizarre shapes are sliding into each other in his peripherals.

“Man, what the hell happened?” someone asks, equal parts pity and disgust. He slides his face upwards to meet the sound of the voice and thinks he might see Michael. No, that’s not Michael. 

“Adam?” Dean tries to say, but it comes out sounding jumbled up like _‘duh?’_

His half brother sets him on his feet with minimal effort, mild disgust clouding his face. Dean sways and nearly falls forward. Adam catches him with an arm and holds him there like he’s made of leather and string.

He feels the cool touch of two fingers to his head and then he’s suddenly much more sober than he’d like to be. “Why’re you here?”

Adam looks annoyed. “You were praying.” His face shifts then, his eyes widening for a moment before his expression schools to something much more clinical than should be seen on a guy still in college. 

“Quite loudly, might I add,” now Michael chimes in. “No one else remains on earth to answer but me.”

He shifts back to Adam and the features droop with eerie efficiency. “Michael just wanted to ignore you, but I convinced him to bring us here. I thought you were going to kill yourself.”

“That’s my business and not yours.” Dean’s smile could be wiped off his face with a wet cloth given how drawn on it feels. How it must seem to them. He keeps up the act. “Besides, I just wanted to celebrate a little since we saved the universe ‘n all.”

“Really?” Adam quirks a brow. There’s a bit of both Michael and Adam in that look. “Sooo… you crying on angel radio for everyone to hear begging for Castiel to come back was, what, a dud?” 

“Wasn’t me.” Dean grins again, feeling his cheeks stretch. 

“And you are getting inebriated to the point of collapse.” Michael cuts in, his tone clipped. “To...celebrate.”

“Yeah. Problem?”

Dean’s not sure which one of them sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, but he wants to bet money that it’s still Michael. “If I hadn’t come, how likely is it that you’d have given yourself some buckshot to the face by the end of tonight?” That’s Adam. Guess he was wrong. 

“That’s for me to know and you to never find out,” Dean says, but of course they would find out. The guns are loaded in the back seat. 

“Listen, Dean,” Adam says, “I might still be a bit steamed about you leaving me and Michael in the Cage,” ignoring Dean’s subtle flinch, the way he raises an eyebrow at the _‘us’_ in that statement, “but that doesn’t mean we still aren’t family.” 

“I don’t get to decide that.” Dean says. 

“Yeah, you don’t. I’m _telling_ you that we are. And I’m worried about you.” Adam’s eyes are pleading. “Pretty sure Sam and Jack are, too. Where are they, anyway?”

“Who knows.”

Sam and Jack are back home, living the life that they deserve to live. Together, happy, free from the puppetmaster at last. A family waiting for Dean to come home. They think he’s out on a hunt somewhere, as they do sometimes when the bunker starts to feel a little stuffy. He wonders what they’d say if they knew what he was doing now, barely hanging off the arms of an archangel that’s looking at him with so much contempt he feels like he’s back in hell again, and maybe he is, because there’s so much pain and anger inside him and Cas isn’t here and —

“It is repugnant that a Sword of mine has sunk so low,” Michael interrupts, his voice whip-sharp and cutting through Dean’s thoughts like a blade, “so as to lose himself in vice and corruption.”

“ _Michael,”_ Adam starts, but he gets dragged back into the body they share, and it’s too late because that sets off something in Dean, too. The archangel’s face is positively thunderous. 

“Now don’t you judge me, feathers,” Dean growls. “You don’t get to.”

“Why not?” The tone appraising him is cool, buzzing with power underneath. “After everything that has happened, everything you’ve done, can you really say that I have no right to judge you?” 

“But —” 

“You threw your own brother into the Cage and forgot about him,” continues Michael with ice in his voice. “You returned multiple times but still it did not cross your mind to help him.”

“You were willing to let my nephew, your _own son_ — forgive me if I leer at the idea that you might actually see him that way — die to further your cause.” Dean flinches at that one and has the decency to look ashamed.

“Michael,” repeats Adam from somewhere, sounding sad, but Michael is a cyclone, fierce and unstoppable, his very words infused with grace and rage. The wrathful, proud archangel of decades past hadn’t been whittled down by his time in the Cage after all, Dean thinks distantly. Unchanged.

“It seems to me that family matters not when they disagree with your agenda.” Each word is another punch to the gut. Michael finally releases him and his knees threaten to give out, so he staggers backward. The brick wall behind him makes cool contact with Dean’s palms, and he shivers at the sudden chill. “So tell me, what is your excuse?”

Off to the distance, the sounds of some distant brawl echo along the streets, and he suddenly can’t find the words. 

“You are a disappointment, Dean Winchester.” Michael says with finality. “The only reason I haven’t smote you where you stand is courtesy of the brother you neglected to save.”

The pause that ensues is almost tangible, painful and hanging on Dean’s throat much like the burn of alcohol does. Yet it does nothing similar to take his pain away, his chagrin at the truth of Michael’s words. Even Adam seems to say nothing in his defense, shocked into silence. It’s not like Dean ever deserved it in the first place.

A few heartbeats later, when he’s managed to catch his breath and his eyes aren’t burning as much, Dean lifts his head. “...You’re right,” he manages as his voice cracks. “Everything you said. You’re right.” 

Michael raises an eyebrow. “Self pity will get you nowhere wi —” 

“I’m sorry.”

He stops in his tracks. 

“I’m a real fuckin’ piece of work, aren’t I,” Dean laughs, feeling it resonate like shards of glass in his throat. “I was happy to let Jack die so we could get our happy ending. Hell, the place I was in, I probably would have done him in myself, if — ”

Overhead, the stars wink at him, as if in mockery. He wonders if Castiel is out there somewhere. He’s not, but it’s still nice to think about.

“And you’re right about Adam too. We coulda busted him out at any point, hunted down Death again and tortured him for it if we really wanted to, but,” he scratches the back of his head as if he means to break the skin there, “we didn’t.”

The ghost of Castiel’s disapproving expression haunts him, and he blinks rapidly to get the stinging burn away. Dean looks up again, forcing himself to make eye contact with Michael — no, Adam, who looks more vulnerable than he’s ever seen him. 

“I said it once already, but I’ll say it again as many times as you need. I’m _sorry._ ” Dean grits his teeth. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know if there’s any way I can make it up to you, the way we neglected you — “

“And forgot about him,” puts in Michael helpfully, his tone stern, before retreating back into Adam’s body.

Dean flinches. “And forgot about you.”

Indecision blooms on his brother’s face, and seemingly out of habit, he pulls his jacket closer around him. It occurs to Dean that he has their father’s eyes. He’d never thought to look before. Never thought it would be so important. 

“I was stuck in the Cage with Lucifer for a thousand years,” Adam starts, his voice barely a whisper. “I had to listen to him flay your brother alive, for a while.”

Glancing sideways, Dean frowns. “Oh,” he says.

“If Michael had been less merciful…” Adam trails off. “If I hadn’t had him keeping me safe _...”_ he breaks off with a shuddering sigh. “Sometimes I still hear Lucifer’s voice in my ear, telling me what exactly he wanted to do to me.” The haunted, dead look in his eyes is back, but he shakes his head and wills it away.

“I get it, Dean. I understand why you chose him and not me,” Adam says sadly. “I get why you did what you did. When you live like that and need to look out for the only family you’ve ever had, making tough decisions is the only way to survive.” 

“Still, it hurt you,” says Dean, self-deprecation ripping the last vestiges of breath from his lungs. “It hurt everyone I cared about, and now…” 

And now Cas is dead. Jack, happy as he is, won’t look at him with anything other than a meek sort of fear, and Sam… 

The guns are loaded in the back seat. 

“They’re waiting for you,” Adam murmurs, seeming to have read his thoughts. “They’re worried about you, too. Michael hears them now. So go make it right.” 

“Do all of you Winchesters pray without realizing it?” Michael snorts. “Your thoughts are akin to a newspaper’s gossip column up in heaven.” 

Dean’s back touches the wall and he sinks to the ground, hitting the stone with a muffled _thump._ He puts his face in his hands, but no tears come out this time. He’s done. Dry, empty, and done. 

“Billie said that,” he whispers, the sound stifled and hollow, “when I died, she was gonna throw me into the Empty, since I wouldn’t stay where I was supposed to stay. So I figured…” 

“Dean,” Adam says, sounding far away.

“I figured, hey, maybe it’s not too bad, kicking the bucket now. After everything that’s happened…” he heaves a parched sob. “Maybe Sam and Jack would have a shot at being normal without having me around to fuck it all up. N’ maybe…”

Maybe he could see those blue eyes again, that wild, mussed-up hair. Say back the words that he couldn’t say then, when an angel was in tears before him, telling him those three little words, smiling as he sacrificed his life, once again, for someone who would never deserve it.

When Dean died the new Death would appear to him, whoever they might be. Billie had been a reaper of tradition. She would have done exactly as she’d promised in the name of keeping order, and then maybe he might’ve seen Cas again. Though in the end she had been swallowed up too, eaten by the Shadow, what was to say that her successor wouldn’t be as merciful?

“You loved him,” Adam says softly as he once again reads Dean’s mind with scary accuracy. Is that Michael’s doing? He ought to tell them to stay out of there, for their own good. 

A tremor sends Dean’s features cresting, passing across the skin of his arms and leaving goosebumps in its wake. 

“Yeah. I did.”

Several minutes later, wordlessly — because what more is there to say? — Dean allows Michael to press two fingers to his temple and take him home. 

~*~

Castiel says, “you’re sure about this, then?” 

He’s sitting by the table in the main room, beer in hand and tracing the carvings they’d left notched into the wood. Eileen smiles at him in passing as she bustles about, Jack hovering over his shoulder like he still can’t believe he’s there. “Dean’s out on a hunt somewhere up north,” he points out helpfully, “but that was three days ago. And he said he’d be back around today.”

“I think we should at least give him a call and tell him about … about me,” ventures Castiel, uncertainty clouding his features. “I imagine seeing me again will be a dreadful shock.”

Sam comes into the room and claps him on the back. “Trust me, Cas,” he says, beaming down at him as Eileen slides her arms around his chest and gets up on her toes to kiss him. “Dean’s been pretending like nothing’s wrong for the past three weeks. He goes out on hunts for days and comes back and holes himself up in his room. If we try to talk to him about anything he just clams up.” His face dulls a little, and Cas hopes after today he’ll never have to see that look on any of them again. “And he hasn’t been picking up his phone.”

“I like surprises, maybe Dean will too,” Jack says with a sprightly air, hopping up to perch on the tabletop next to him and ignoring his gentle admonishment to get down from there. “Especially since it’s you that’s the surprise.”

Castiel gazes up at him in admiration. It turns out that the residual power Jack had absorbed in the Empty was a temporary, one-and-done thing. Sam had told him as they were still catching up that it had dripped off of him in the days and weeks afterward, slowly siphoning his own archangel grace along with it and leaving only a whole, healed soul behind.

Now that the weight of the world is off their shoulders (and for good this time), Castiel hopes that Jack can live as normal a life he pleases. There was always something unsettling about letting a three year old child run around with that much power, putting so much of a burden on him to do right and fight and spill blood. Of course, they’ll have to skip over a bunch of things children can enjoy, speed through others considering he doesn’t look the part, but it’ll all turn out well in the end. Castiel’s sure of it.

“Besides, you just got back today,” continues Sam, circling around the edge to sit across from him, his own bottle in hand. “So it’ll be like a reunion party for the both of you.” 

They clink their beers together, Eileen coming in with hers as well, content to just enjoy the moment. 

A sudden, furious rush of wings has four pairs of eyes snapping up to identify the commotion. There in the center of the room, just in front of the interdimensional-telescope-that-no-longer-works, stands Michael, looking quite bored. 

Everyone stands up at once. “Is that —” Jack whispers. 

The archangel sighs, unceremoniously dropping the giant lump he’d been holding. It hits the ground with a muffled string of curses. “I found him on the outskirts of town, half-dead from alcohol poisoning,” he drawls. “Consider this a favor. And keep a better eye on him next time.” His gaze travels to Castiel, stiffening just a fraction, and then he nods at him before turning away. “Farewell.” 

He’s gone before they can get another word out. 

Sam and Eileen rush to Dean’s side, heaving him onto his feet and checking him out. “Did he hurt you?” Sam demands, the beginnings of fury beginning to erupt on his face. 

“If you count taking my booze away, then yes,” Dean shoots him a tired grin. Sam replies with a well-timed bitchface that lacks any semblance of irritation. He coughs, the sound dry and harsh. “Mainly just bruised my ego a crap ton.”

“He looks all right,” Eileen says as they start to move him to a chair. Dean waves them off with trembling legs. He still hasn’t noticed Castiel, who’s standing there with the chair pushed back, motionless. The lines on his face have become much more pronounced, deeper. He looks like he’s aged ten years in three weeks, a deadened shadow over his features. 

Castiel can’t move. He tries to will his traitorous human legs to work but they remain frozen to the spot. He can only stand there, rooted, watching with bated breath as Dean slowly, surely, carefully works his gaze upward, to the opposite side of the room, and those dull green eyes fixate on him. 

No one moves. No one even breathes. 

And then Dean’s saying,

~*~

  
  


“Cas?” 

A ghost in front of him. 

The pair of eyes staring back are bluer than they’ve ever been. Dean wants to bask in them, hold him close and drown in them, never look away again. They’re clearer than he remembers, the kind of bright that burns through him and pins him there, capable of so much warmth and love that he did not — still does not deserve.

Love that burns in them now, true and bright and something Dean won’t push away this time.

He will not dare to hope that this is real. Because God and Fate are cruel sons of bitches and this may very well be a fever dream, Chuck’s last cosmic joke, the final big fuck you to end all others. Dean crosses the room slowly, like he’s afraid one of them will disappear. His legs feel weighed down with lead. “That really you?” His voice is hoarse from weeks of disuse.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, watery eyes betraying his smile. 

“ _Cas.”_ Seeing him is all it takes for Dean’s voice to crack, pressed under the weight of grief, and it’s all falling to pieces and he closes that distance into a warmth he never thought he’d feel again beneath his fingers. Castiel grasps at him like he’s an anchor, fisting his own hands in the sleeves of that jacket Dean would never think about taking off again, because the handprint left there was going to be the last thing he’d have to remember Castiel by, and he promised himself he was going to die with it, right where it belonged.

But here Castiel is now, standing in front of him. Maybe it’s just the residual hurt or a bit of alcohol Michael had somehow missed, but Dean can’t stop trembling. It’s as though all the fear and sorrow he thought he’d managed to push down and suppress has surged back up full force.

“Don’t go,” Dean almost _sobs,_ pleading internally for him to understand. “Please, Cas, don’t go.”

Quietly, Sam and Eileen exchange a glance before leaving the room, taking Jack with them. Footsteps echo in the hallway and fade out, but all Dean can think about right now is the grounding weight in front of him. The floor is theirs. They’ve got all the time in the world. 

Miraculously, Castiel allows him his chick flick moment and _stays_. Dean feels his arms, warm and hesitant, circle his waist until they’re wrapped around him tight, and his hands begin to rub soothing circles in between his shoulder blades. As if that weren’t embarrassing enough, he’s crooning into Dean’s ear, something soft and low and grounding. Dean just lets it all go then, his shoulders shaking as he breaks down, and if Castiel cares that he’s getting his trenchcoat wet he doesn’t mention it. 

“I’m here now, Dean,” he murmurs, over and over. “I’m here.” 

It’s been years since he’s lost it so completely, sobbing like a child. Like the air in his lungs has been sucked away, like the first time he’d lost Sam or Mom or anybody he’s ever loved in his life. There was a point of no return, he’d thought. At some point he figured he’d lost the capacity to care this much about somebody _other_ than Sam or Mom or Jack, to weep this openly in front of them with sheer relief and joy flooding his brain.

Happy tears are a luxury Dean is just now learning he can have.

“I need you,” Dean is saying through heaving, stuttering breaths, burying his face deeper into Castiel’s shoulder. He smells of ocean water and earth, of grass after rain and morning dew. “I’ve always needed you, I was so fuckin’ wrecked without you, please — “

_Don’t ever leave me again._

Cas holds him through the rest of it, carding gentle fingers through his hair and waiting for his breathing to even out. Dean relaxes into the touch, and after an eternity and a half he pulls back, red-eyed and awestruck, staring at Castiel like he’s the most beautiful, precious thing in the world. Because he is, and Dean never got to say it before, or even show it. 

“Saying something like that and dying on me,” he murmurs, diving back into the curve between Cas’ neck and shoulder, too tired and too relieved to force any anger into the words. “Why the hell did you think that was a good idea?”

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Castiel replies honestly. He still hasn’t let go, his hand resting against the back of Dean’s head. If he keeps this up, then Dean might just start to get too comfortable, maybe even start to think he’s allowed happiness in this miserable life of his. “I needed to speak my peace so that the Shadow would take us and spare you. I’m sorry.”

“I thought you weren’t coming back this time.” admits Dean, because something in him, a dam he’s spent his whole life building, has broken, and now decades worth of emotions are rushing out to the forefront. Maybe it’s about time they did. “I was so scared, man.” 

“I’m here now,” Castiel repeats, and Dean can feel his soft smile against the side of his head. “And I don’t intend to leave your side again.”

“No more sacrificing yourself, okay? For _anybody,_ least of all me.” 

“You know I can’t promise that.” But the response is good natured, and something in Dean knows for certain that they won’t be needing to anymore. Dean drops his arms, grabs Castiel’s free hand with his and laces their fingers together. Past him would be running for the hills at how cheesy he’s acting right now, but he can’t find it in him to care.

“How did you even get back?” Dean asks him. “Are you fully juiced up again?” 

Castiel shakes his head, looking forlorn for all of a second before the soft joy returns to his expression, full and open. “I’m afraid I’m as human as they come.”

“Human,” Dean echoes faintly.

“Everyone woke up when Billie sent Jack to the Empty. The Shadow was beside herself with rage.” He pauses. “But you probably already knew that.”

“What happened?”

“Well, Chuck happened.”

“ _Chuck_ saved you?” 

Castiel tilts his head at Dean with a meaningful expression. “He did bring everyone back.” He shakes his head as if to clear something up within himself, then takes a breath. “Because of the deal I made with her, the Shadow was, ah, fond of me. Wanted to keep me like a ‘pet’.” There are the air quotes he loves so much, hanging around the last word. This is Cas, in the flesh. He’s really here.

“Like a dog on a leash,” Dean remarks, and it draws out a laugh from him, the sound of gravel and dark honey. 

“Chuck came to the Empty to rest,” explains Castiel, squinting slightly, “and I suppose this was his way of trying to make things right.”

“Huh.” Can’t say he forgives the guy for everything he’s put Dean and Sam and everyone through, but it’s a start. “Maybe he wasn’t entirely bad after all.”

“Maybe,” Castiel hums. Dean feels the wild urge to gather him up in his arms again. There’s nothing stopping him from doing what he wants anymore. No one to control him. So he goes in for another embrace, unafraid about what it’ll mean for the first time in his entire life, and Castiel melts into it without any hesitation. “The Shadow wanted me to suffer with them for all eternity. But God … _Chuck,”_ he pauses, fiddling with a loose thread on Dean’s jacket, “convinced her that a mortal lifespan trapped on Earth with everything I had helped put away would … straighten me out.”

“But there aren’t any angels _or_ demons left on Earth,” Dean says, then the realization dawns on him as the crow’s feet around Castiel’s eyes crinkle in response. “Son of a bitch.”

“What the Shadow doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he says mischievously. “The only caveat was that she be allowed to tear my grace out herself.”

Dean winces at the mental image. “Jesus.” 

Castiel doesn’t frown. “It was over before I knew it. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a field in Wyoming with nothing but the clothes on my back.” He pulls away for a bit, looks apologetic. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back to you.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything,” Dean insists before he can say anything further, the tears threatening to take hold again. He leans back, presses his lips against Castiel’s temple, letting them rest there. “If anything, it’s me who should be sorry. Letting you go like that, letting you think I didn’t feel the same way about you — “

“Dean.” Castiel says, soft and firm as he raises his hand to caress Dean’s cheek. The smile on his face is heartbreaking, the same one that had blossomed across his face as he was swallowed up by the inky black sludge of the Shadow, drawing him away from Dean for what had seemed like the last time. “I knew already. I’ve always known. You’ve never had to say it.”

“I _want_ to say it,” Dean whispers against heated skin, because there’s no longer any reason to keep it in. He’s free. They all are. “I love you.”

He feels Castiel’s sharp intake of breath, feels his heartbeat quicken beneath his palms, and continues, softly, “I love you, Cas. All that stuff you said to me about not being able to have the one thing you wanted, you were wrong.” The world around them has ceased to exist. “You’ve had it all along, but,” with just a touch of self deprecation, he adds, “I guess you weren’t the one who had to figure that part out.”

_I want to grow old with you._

_I want to wake up next to you every morning._

_I want to spend our eternity together._

“And now we can,” Castiel says shyly, pulling his hand away from Dean’s cheek to link their fingers together. Heat rushes to his face. Had he said all of that out loud? “That is, if you’ll have me.”

Dean doesn’t bother to answer that with words —after all, he’s never been any good at those — instead opting to kiss him. Castiel’s mouth is soft beneath his, full of awe and wonderment. A delighted sound escapes his throat. Before the ex-angel pulls back, before he can get too far away, Dean leans forward and pecks him on the lips once more, grinning. “That enough of an answer for you?” he rasps, realizing how disgusting they’re being but feeling too blissed out to care. 

“I’m going to need you to do that again,” Castiel laughs breathlessly, and grabs him by the lapel of his jacket to pull him back in. “Just to be sure.”

Sam comes back into the room a short while later, wolf whistling at the shameless display, Eileen and Jack in tow. Dean flips him the bird behind Cas’ back without letting him go. His heart is soaring. They’re all together again, Team Free Will, a family he’d never thought he would be allowed to have.

Maybe things are going to look up from now on. They’ve got the rest of their lives ahead of them to figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone's been doing all right. be sure to take care of yourselves! I love you all :)
> 
> As always, do leave a kudos/comment if you liked this. I'm kind of a mess myself atm so if I remembered details wrong feel free to correct me on them. Constructive criticism is always appreciated! Until next time!


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